Home was where the hospital is

By: Linda Deitch

The Columbus Dispatch - January 04, 2013 12:38 PM

DISPATCH FILE PHOTO

For those of us who travel Rt. 315 on a daily basis, there are lots of construction cranes to
see as building projects are going up at Riverside Methodist Hospital and at the Wexner Medical
Center at OSU. So much progress has been made at these hospitals over the years that it's
hard to believe there was life going on there before them.

In this Dispatch photo from 1955, a once-stately house sits on Olentangy River Road at West
North Broadway. Ground was broken here three years later, in June 1958, for the future
Riverside Methodist Hospital.

Riverside actually was incorporated much earlier, as Protestant Hospital, on March 18, 1891, by
the Methodist Episcopal Church. It was located on Dennison Avenue. When that location
became too small, it moved to a new building in 1898, just east of Goodale Park at Buttles and
Park. In 1922, Protestant Hospital was renamed White Cross Hospital. It remained a
Short North landmark for decades.

After it made its big move in April 1961, the new White Cross changed its name to Riverside
Methodist Hospital.

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Next week,we'll post a photo of what the current Wexner Medical Center site looked like
in the late 1940s.